


Inspector Reid's Catalogue of Criminals

by shyday



Category: Ripper Street
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 11:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3690120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shyday/pseuds/shyday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An archive fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inspector Reid's Catalogue of Criminals

**Author's Note:**

> Set just before the start of s3, but with details revealed in that series. I adore the idea of Reid’s archive as much as it breaks my heart – it’s so very him and such a brilliant notion, but it has so much potential to swallow him whole. This is simply a bit of toying with that, a distraction from all the things I’m working on that have more of a semblance of plot. For the h/c bingo prompt “trapped between realities.”
> 
>  
> 
> I make no money, because they do not belong to me.

 

* * *

 

 

The rain spatters against the windows, a distant sound. A staccato beat that subconsciously draws the narrow space in a little closer, that makes an encapsulated world of these damp archive walls. It does its best to clean the outside of the glass, but the inside remains layered in a smear of soot and grime. The rain taps out its unending frustration as it tries to get at the other side of the panes.

 

It feels nearer to morning than not, and a glance at his pocketwatch confirms the hour at almost half four. Soon it will be time for a shift change. He considers that perhaps he should take a walk around the shop, to put in an appearance among his men for form’s sake.

 

The idea is disregarded. They know where to find him if he is needed.

 

The wire-rimmed spectacles tug at his ear, catching as he goes to remove them; the room softens a little as they’re rested lightly atop the papers covering his desk. A concession to the passing of years, naggingly necessary these days if he wishes work the hours he does without all the reading leading inevitably to migraine. He supposes he should be grateful that he has them to clarify the words on the page; they were not inexpensive, and had he anything else to lay claim to his money he probably would not have been able to justify the price. But he would not choose to give up his reading.

 

Especially now. With there being so little left otherwise.

 

And yet. The spectacles stand above all else a reminder of so many tiny details that have changed, and after wearing them for too long a time they pinch ferociously at his temples, the bridge of his nose. Reid props his elbows on the desk, massaging at the temporary dents in his skin through the short hairs of his sideburns. It’s an exchange of one discomfort for another; certainly this bruised ache is a good trade over blinding migraine.

 

And yet. He will not protest wearing them, but he loathes their constant whispering symbolism that he is swiftly growing old.

 

Reid stands, stretches. Complaints issue from muscles that have never before found cause to protest, another reminder of all the years that have gone by to get to this point. The recognition sets his lips into a thin line, and he seeks another direction for his thoughts. This is a well traveled path his mind sets out on. He has no wish to walk it tonight.

 

A grumbling issues from his stomach that cannot so easily be interpreted as hunger or upset, his erratic eating habits having made it disturbingly difficult at times to distinguish between the two. An appetite recognized only moments before the balance is tipped into an empty nausea, his lack of interest in food lending no urgency toward keeping a regular schedule with his meals. Cooking for himself in that abandoned house is too mechanical a process, and it brings him neither peace nor satisfaction. He does it because he must. When he bothers to drag himself back there at all.

 

Reid moves awkwardly around the small alcove between the tall shelves, working out the kinks in his back and his legs. It’s not much of an office – with the compact desk and chair filling most of the area, it colors his room upstairs as practically palatial. But he has never felt cramped or claustrophobic down here. Maybe it Is because he knows he’s literally _surrounded_ by information, can virtually feel it humming from the books and binders stacked around him. And he’s always found comfort in information. Loved being near to a book. When he was a boy he’d dreamt for a time of being a scholar, unclear on the particulars, perhaps, but solid in the understanding that he yearned for the freedom to acquire knowledge. To read. To think. In his darkest days as a police officer, that dream used to glow like a hazy tease of paradise.

 

Now he devotes more hours than he cares to count to his books, his knowledge. He wants to do it; he believes the undertaking to be overwhelmingly imperative. But paradise does not taste as rich as he’d thought it would. And that irony is not lost on him.

 

Reid scoops up his glass as he passes the desk again; what little scotch remains dances about in the dim light as he brings it up to his mouth. He leans against the wall by the cloudy window, sipping at the liquor and watching the rain track blurry snakes down the outside. On impulse, he reaches his arm through the bars to rub clean a patch with the cuff of his sleeve.

 

He peers through the aperture he has created, a spectacular view of precisely nothing. Not in this rain. Not at this hour. The archive is housed in a converted cell block, and even under better conditions than these this window was never intended to afford a great deal by way of sightseeing. He squints out into the night anyway, working to form the shadows into shapes he can name. He barely tastes the scotch as it slips over his tongue and down his throat.

 

“You know, you _could_ just venture out there.”

 

The voice comes from behind him, instantly recognizable no matter how many years since last he’s heard it. Reid turns, the rush of too many conflicting emotions leaving him tingling. “What –?” His thoughts tumble over one another. Crowding his tongue and blocking any egress.

 

Jackson stands at the far edge of the alcove space, looking every bit as Reid remembers him. It has been two years at least since he’s seen the American. Maybe three now. Time has flowed sticky and strange throughout these months he’s survived alone.

 

“Come on,” Jackson says with a grin. “Hasn’t been that long.”

 

Standing here smiling as if nothing has happened. As if no chasm of years yawns wide between who they are and who they were. It is more disorienting than Reid would have imagined; the hand not clenched tightly around the glass finds the solidity of the window ledge. The coolness of the brick seeps into his palm, grounding him.

 

“Why are you here?” Harsher than he had intended, perhaps. Perhaps not.

 

“Hello to you too, Reid.” The grin is still there.

 

It would be a fiction to claim he’s not thought of this man; he will lie to himself about so much else, but tonight he has not the strength to form this one. In truth, he’d not expected to see the American ever again.

 

“Why have you come?” Reid asks once more, scrabbling to find purchase over what feels dangerously shifting ground. This time it’s more a motion of his lips over any actual sound. He is unsure if Jackson hears the repetition.

 

If he does, he ignores it. The captain slouches at the end of the row of shelves, arms folded across his chest as he looks about the area. “So this is it, huh? Inspector Reid’s Catalogue of Criminals?”

 

The familiar lines of Jackson’s casual stance relax some of the situation’s surrealistic hold. The American has always seemed something of a jumble of loose limbs when compared with the habitual stiffness he feels in himself. “That is the ultimate goal, yes.”

 

A cigarette appears between Jackson’s fingers, seeming to materialize itself out of the shadows. The only illumination down here stems from the lamp on the desk and the lantern waiting on the shelf above it; Reid rarely makes use of the new overhead electric lighting that’s been so meticulously installed. He knows that he should – he’s well aware of how much it cost – but though the bulbs hanging from the ceiling certainly give the night more definition, their brightness still seems an unnatural glare. He finds the dimness to which he’s accustomed far more soothing.

 

Jackson brings a match to the tip of his cigarette. “And how’s that working out for you?”

 

The smoke dissipates in the space between them; Reid takes a breath, but it does not flavor the air as he’d anticipated. He remembers it well, the way that smoke would thicken up a closed room. Infusing silently into hair and fabric. Lying in wait to call attention to itself hours later, patient until his mind had moved on to other things and whatever interaction they’d had that day had been more often than not mostly forgotten.

 

A shift of an arm, a turn of his neck. A hint of stale smoke. And abruptly the American would be right there back with him, pushing his way into his head.

 

Reid moves away from the window, across the two steps it takes to reach the desk. He sets the tumbler down in the lamp’s pool of light; the drops clinging to the curves at the bottom of the glass slip-slide together to merge into their own miniature puddle. “It is time consuming,” he admits absently, his focus captured by the way the light sparkles in the last of the liquor. “But it shall be invaluable.”

 

“Okay.”

 

The nonchalance breaks Reid from his fugue. He has not allowed himself to give any thought to what the American’s reaction might be to this endeavor, but he supposes that if he had he’d have hoped there’d at least be some interest. When he glances up, Jackson does naught but study him. The cigarette dangles carelessly from his long surgeon’s fingers.

 

Trailing smoke Reid still cannot smell. The air is motionless in here, despite the wind he can hear whipping frenzied against the buildings outside. Reid’s eyes narrow. He takes another step toward Jackson, sniffing deliberately; his instincts flare with the sudden sense that something about this isn’t right.

 

Jackson arcs an eyebrow at him. He apes Reid’s sampling of the air, sniffs at his own clothes. He holds a hand up in front of his mouth and exhales, checking his breath.

 

“What?” he asks, clearly confused.

 

Reid quickly closes the distance between them, grabs the American’s hand. He isn’t certain what he’d been expecting would happen when he plucks the cigarette from the man’s fingers, but it doesn’t. The cigarette feels as real as anything as he examines it, and the smoke sears the lining of his throat when Reid puts it to his lips and inhales.

 

Still something feels off. It tickles at the back of his brain.

 

“So, uh… how much time you spending down here, anyway?”

 

The question comes softly, so much gentler than the venomous words hurled his way the last time they’d seen each other. Too many things said then, holding more truths than could be easily discounted. And not all of them said in an American accent. Reid hands back the cigarette, not looking in Jackson’s direction.

 

He has no desire to answer. He rests a hand on the top of his chair, letting it take some of his weight as he rubs at his eyes. A train rumbles by, sending the room into a noisy tremble that he’s not yet been able to get used to. Reid listens to the sound of mortar shaking loose from the cracks in the ceiling.

 

He drops his hand. Straightens. Jackson continues to watch him; it’s been a while since he’s felt the weight of this gaze. The American takes a slow drag off of the cigarette.

 

“You’re hiding in here,” he observes.

 

Reid bristles, the settling of the room in the wake of the passing train missed in his rising irritation. “Who are you to come here and pass judgement on me?”

 

Jackson shrugs. He inhales again, and the tip of the cigarette glows.

 

But that’s all that it does, Reid realizes, focusing in on the cigarette more closely. Just as there is no discernible smell, he can see now that neither does the thin paper burn. The end lights up as it should. But the length of the stick gets no shorter.

 

He must be imagining it. He cannot argue that he’s tired, and those bloody spectacles remain still waiting atop the desk. The most logical explanation then simply that his traitorous eyes play games; indeed, even as he watches the defect corrects itself. There’s a faint sizzle as the embers chew the paper to ash.  

 

But as he blinks at the figure before him he begins to see other things, such as the way Jackson’s boots – something Reid had never given much thought to – are little more than fuzzy shapes until he pays them some serious attention. They take on a more substantial form when he really looks at them, albeit one generic and quite possibly inaccurate, and he cannot say for sure that this impression isn’t just another trick of the light. Like the man’s hat, the one Reid is positive he’d been holding when first he’d arrived. The hat that’s missing until he concentrates on finding it.

 

The one that reappears on his desk the second time his eyes sweep the space.

 

Deception of illumination and shadow, or perhaps broad details satisfied without enough attention devoted to the finer points. The longer he stands here, the less real this all feels. “I’m dreaming,” Reid decides, sinking into the chair.

 

“Or going mad,” Jackson says helpfully.

 

Or that. It is not entirely a novel thought.

 

Reid rebels against it still, a deep-seated reflex. “And my mind has chosen you companion in my madness?” The disquiet this brings is not completely for show.

 

“You could do worse.”

 

There was a time when Reid had believed so. A period of a few years when his need to keep this man at his side had eclipsed much else. He had been so confidant in the team that they made, had been willing to go to such lengths to hold it together. Never speculating on how long it might endure. Reveling in it for the months that it did.

 

But those memories have been badly trampled. And too great the span of years since last he indulged in the fantasy that that camaraderie could one day ever return. “What is it you want?”

 

“Me? Nothing.”

 

Wonderful. He has conjured up a Captain Homer Jackson as directionless as in life. Reid turns back to the papers on his desk, opens the top file folder and uncaps his pen. “Then leave me. I have work.”

 

“Be my guest,” Jackson says. “I ain’t stopping you.”

 

Real or no, he can feel the American’s eyes on him. Obstinately Reid ignores him, snatching a note off a waiting pile; when he brings it closer, the writing upon it is nothing but meaningless squiggles. His fingers fumble for his eyeglasses as he squints at the paper. He puts them on, and the thin metal settles readily into the matching grooves in his skin.

 

They offer no assistance, however, in the writing’s translation. The lenses sharpen the ink on the page, but only into a series of symbols he cannot begin to understand. Reid sighs, pulling off the spectacles and tossing them back onto the desk; he closes his eyes and groans in frustration. It seems he will be getting no work done at the moment.

 

“Don’t misunderstand – it surely is impressive.”

 

Jackson’s voice is far nearer his ear than he would have expected, but when Reid opens his eyes the American is still where he was. It occurs to him that, if this is a dream, he merely flatters his own ego here with compliments paid to himself. With the realization, the words ring a hollow approval.

 

“Leave me,” Reid says again. It sounds more tired and less certain.

 

The rain has gotten heavier; something creaks loudly and repetitively out there in the wind. “I just wonder,” Jackson continues, as if Reid had not spoken, “how much this whole thing is shaping up one grand excuse.”

 

“Excuse,” Reid repeats dully. He has no desire to discuss his motivations with a figment.

 

“You know exactly what I’m saying.”

 

“I do not.”

 

Jackson snorts. He puffs at his endless cigarette.

 

Why is he even participating in this discussion? Reid tries to recall anything he may have once heard about ways in which one can attempt to awaken from a dream. His mind offers nothing useful. Only a image of sitting on the edge of his daughter’s bed, putting her to sleep with a story; the tale is lost, but he still remembers how small that wooden bedframe had felt beneath him. How light she was where she lay half curled in his lap. The memory is of no use to him here, and his heart shies away from it.

 

“The archive will be an essential tool,” Reid says, feeling drawn into the justification. It annoys him. “There is no one else to compile it.”

 

“Really.” Jackson is unconvinced. “No one.”

 

“No.” It is his project; he is the one who will see it through. Reid is well aware of the whisperings, the general consensus that this archive will provide little more in the end than evidence of a broken man’s obsession. That he wastes his time down here, scribbling details too innocuous to be of any use. But he can see it clearly, envisions the key role these facts will play. And he can entrust this effort to no one but himself.

 

“Uh-huh,” the American says.

 

Reid’s mouth opens to argue further, but he smashes his lips closed over the words. There is no point in trying to persuade him. The man isn’t even here.

 

If this truly is a dream, though, it seems wholly unfair that he should be able to feel the headache growing undeniably behind his eyes. An echo of earlier in the day, a memento from a thug who had not wanted to comply with H-Division’s new intake procedures. He’d knocked Reid cleanly into the corner of a cabinet before they’d been able to subdue him. Reid had had recovered quickly enough, had helped to pin the man until he was cuffed to the table so that they could get their measurements. But the headache had dogged him for most of the day.

 

Those notes on the man’s specifics are in the pile, awaiting transcription. If only he could read them.

 

Reid presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, hoping that when he removes them he will find some relief. From the pain in his head. Or the Yankee hallucination. He receives neither.

 

“Me, Drake, Deborah, Jane. Mathilda. Emily…” Jackson recites, his voice low and thoughtful. “Not much left out there for you, is there?”

 

They all hurt, but the last is goringly fresh. Only a matter of months since she’d died. He can still smell the harsh chemicals of the hospital. See the expression on her doctor’s face. He will not return there, not even in his mind. He refuses to rummage around inside the hole she has left in his chest.

 

“I think you a specter. Come to haunt me.” Reid’s growl winds around the room, doubling back before he actually registers what this would mean. He has always assumed that he would know, were this man to die on his streets. But he’d lost track of the American’s whereabouts some months ago; there was no guarantee he remained in Whitechapel, alive or no.

 

A distressing thought, holding a surprising amount of power still. Reid shakes it off, comforting himself with the stern reminder that he does not truly believe in spirits.

 

“I say we have a séance and find out,” Jackson smirks at him.

 

Reid sees no need to dignify this suggestion with a response.

 

Thunder booms through the skies outside, close and furious. Jackson trails his hand over a stack of notebooks; his fingertips smudge and merge with the spines on the shelf. Reid finds it easier not to look at him.

 

“C’mon, Reid. Surely you’ve got the names of a dozen soothsayers in here. Let’s rustle one up.”

 

“Why?” It’s barely a croak, an exhausted noise. Reid has the urge to put his head down on the desk, to simply wait this all out. If his body must insist on wasting time with sleep, he wishes his brain would at least allow it to be restful.

 

“Because I want you to _talk_ to me.”

 

It’s nearly a whine, and Reid can’t for the life of him figure out why a phantom of his own imagining should be so desperate for his attention. “Please,” he says. “Go away.”

 

Something shifts in his peripheral vision. “How ‘bout like this?” Jackson asks. “You more comfortable talking to me when you can hold yourself superior?”

 

Against his will, Reid turns his head. The apparition has altered, now looking far more like the Jackson Reid recalls from the last time they’d met. Sloppy and sodden, hair mussed and eyes glazed. The collar of his shirt tries to escape from his jacket; one side of the bottom hem hangs untucked from his trousers. There’s a bottle in his hand. And a dangerous cant to his stance.

 

“Better?” Jackson slurs. He takes a clumsy swig off the bottle. Drags the back of his hand over his mouth.

 

The man is almost obscenely dirty, unspecified filth covering both his clothes and his skin. As with the cigarette smoke, the odor is absent here. But Reid remembers its intensity. “Stop it.”

 

“You had a lot to say to me then, Reid. Don’t you think I forgot.” Jackson slides down to the stone floor, sitting slumped against the cabinet at the bottom of the shelves. He curls around the bottle, in no apparent hurry to be anywhere else. “You say it all?” he asks, squinting up at Reid in the chair. “Got nothing more?”

 

“What would be the point? You are not truly here.”

 

A grin sweeps the American’s face; he offers Reid a lazy toast. “ _There_ he is. The consummate expert on everything. Never wrong, are you, Inspector?”

 

He drinks messily, a trickle of liquor spilling from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. Jackson dips his head to wipe his face against the shoulder of his jacket. When he looks up again, it’s clear he’s raised his head too quickly; his eyelids flicker, the orbs underneath showing white as they start to roll back in his skull.

 

Reid is unmoved. He’s had his fill of this aggravating fading in and out, a staple of countless conversations in the days leading up to the end. Too often he’d found himself turning to ask the American his opinion of something related to a current case, only to discover Jackson virtually an insensible lump at his side. He’d watched as it had grown increasingly worse, at a loss for what to do as his friend had disintegrated bereft and useless.

 

Jackson recovers from his drunken swoon, blinking languidly. Belches. He glances around the room, as if trying to pin down his surroundings. Takes another drink.

 

Reid scowls.

 

“Ghost or mental invention – I care not,” he says. He is surprised by the sincerity of the statement. “What do you hope to accomplish here?”

 

“Told you.” A mumble; Jackson drops his forehead with a flat smack into the palm of his hand. “Wanna talk.”  

 

It’s a parody of the weariness Reid feels twisting through own his bones. He has no experience with spirits, but never would he have expected one so torpid.

 

“I refuse to talk to a figment of my imagination,” Reid insists, though he’s been doing just that. His heartbeat throbs behind his cheekbones, pulses against the bruise on the side of his face. “And I am not going mad.”

 

Jackson lifts his head to throw a hazy smirk Reid’s way. “Positive?”

 

No. In truth, he is not.

 

Reid retrieves his own bottle from the tiny desk’s solitary drawer, refills his glass. He wonders if it’s possible for one to get drunk in a dream. The American certainly seems to be managing it.

 

“You got no one else to talk to, Reid,” drifts Jackson’s voice up from the floor. “Not anymore.” It’s blatantly unapologetic, as are his eyes when Reid meets them. A fact. One there is no sense in denying.

 

“Then I shall finish out my days in silence,” Reid says, toasting the American in turn. “And the world will be none the worse off for it.”

 

The scotch tastes diluted, watery on his tongue. No pleasure to be had in anything tonight, apparently.

 

“That what you think?”

 

Reid empties the glass in one swallow, the scotch without its bite. “To hold a different opinion postulates an importance to which I’ve never aspired.” He sets down the tumbler, twisting it between his fingertips. Looks up again to find Jackson peering at him.

 

“Seriously? You did battle with Ripper. You’ve a place in the records of history.”

 

Reid chokes on a laugh; he cannot help it. So much about this collection of words sounds absurd to his ear. “Why should history choose to remember the details of so grisly a failure?”

 

“Hell, history s’all about grisly failure. For one side or th’other.”

 

“And what of invention? Advancement?”

 

“S’mostly grisly failure,” Jackson slurs.

 

The captain’s hat still rests on the desk; giving in to a peevish urge, Reid sends it over the edge with a flick of his hand. It falls to the floor as a thing of cloth and leather should, and Jackson’s expression reads decidedly unappreciative.

 

Reid does not care. He will not apologize to an apparition.

 

“I see what happens here,” he says, as the thought finally occurs. “My subconscious stands you up to serve as alienist.”

 

Jackson returns his attention to his bottle. “Sure, Reid. Whatever you say.”

 

“I’ve no need of analysis, no secrets to confess to myself. The ruse will not work. I beg you leave me in peace.”

 

The American does not move, other than to stretch out his legs. “How many times you gonna try and toss me out of your life? Think you’ll ever succeed?”

 

This night lingers too long; Reid begins to suspect he might forever be trapped in it. “That was never my intent,” he protests weakly.

 

“No?” Jackson grumbles. “Sure gave a good imitation.”

 

He’d found the man in a pile of rubbish at the end of an alley, the result of half a day’s searching on foot. He’d not told anyone the purpose of his quest when he’d left; Reid had long since given up wasting H-Division man power to keep tabs on the recalcitrant captain. More often missing than not, it had become a rare thing for Jackson to appear at Leman Street capable of performing the duties they required. By the time Reid had found him, his building irritation had brewed closer to rage.

 

Reid had nearly stumbled over him, collapsed there more mass than man. There had been a moment, when he’d bent to check if this unfortunate was even still breathing, where Reid was _certain_ that this could not possibly be anyone that he knew. He remembers being annoyed with the diversion from his goal. He remembers the twist in his gut, when dirty features coalesced unexpectedly recognizable.

 

A whirlwind of swirling emotions that he’d had no idea what to do with. When Jackson had surfaced from unconsciousness just long enough to toss Reid a bleary grin and roll forward to vomit on his shoes, the anger had been the easiest to grab hold of.

 

“You were a wreck,” Reid tells the phantom American. “I doubt you can accurately recall it.”

 

“’Course I can,” Jackson throws back. “You do.”

 

Of course.

 

“Then there is no need to relive it.” He is impressed with how definitive this sounds. As if events are not already playing themselves out in his head. He’d wrestled the drunk man into a slump against the wall, had been forced to slap him more than once to get his eyes back open. He hadn’t wanted to have to touch him at all.

 

Jackson’s hat has reappeared on his head; he pulls it down low over his eyes. “Fine by me. This isn’t _A Christmas Carol_.”

 

It certainly feels as if it could be. Reid wills himself again to wake up.

 

The storm sounds directly over the top of them, lightning flashing so close it seems it may strike them where they sit. It illuminates the space in irregular intervals, adding another element of jarring oddity to the already strange scene. Surely, if they are in his mind, he should be able to have some influence here. Reid concentrates, focusing on halting the noise of the rain; the effort serves only to make the beat in his head pound that much harder. Another lightning bolt brightens the room.

 

Anger and disgust, so strong then that he can still taste them now. Roaring through his mind as he’d stood there looming over the incoherent American. Trying to clean the grime from his fingers and resolutely ignoring the state of his shoes, his teeth feeling as if about to crack clenched together in his tight jaw. Reid had railed at him in that dark alley, both in his fury and in an attempt to provoke some kind – any kind – of a response. Jackson had been barely capable of keeping himself upright, his only intelligible mutterings some nonsense about a bay mare named Sunrise.  

 

The sot had eventually roused somewhat, able after a while to string enough words together that the argument had become louder and much less one-sided. They had dug their fingers in then. Reached past the superficial to fling at one another the things they knew would hurt the absolute most. It was so easy, when you had been close to someone. Those words glowed so tempting in the midst of a fight. Ammunition begging to be used. Once they had started firing, it had been almost impossible to stop.

 

_Cheater. Liar. Coward. Failure._

 

_Drunk_. It had been this last that had ended it, the spurt of feverish energy dissipating as abruptly as it had come. Before things had come to physical blows between them, but too late to save either from being gouged. Jackson had passed out in the middle of a garbled sentence, sliding face down into the filth. Reid had turned his back and left him there, wishing never to see him again.  

 

And yet, here he is. Though ostensibly in just as much of a stupor.

 

There had been so much potential in this reinvented man, and briefly Reid had seen it shine. A new name, a new story; presenting a true contribution to their world. The most painful part was having no illusions as to exactly what had been thrown away here.

 

Reid nudges Jackson’s leg with his shoe, with a little more force than is necessary. The man’s boots knock together at the end of their sprawl, and Reid finds it in himself to still be surprised at the contact. Solid enough, the ghost seems. Another tick in the ledger on the side that says he has gone mad.

 

Jackson tips the hat back on his head. “What? You lookin’ to talk now?”

 

Not really. There was a time when Reid was convinced that any dream not featuring the wreck of _The Whapping_ would be preferable; these days he’s found the folly in this, an entirely new cast to populate his nightmares. But he takes no comfort in this scenario, in what should probably be viewed if anything as a welcome respite. If this is a dream, it flows an incredibly tedious one.

 

“What would we discuss? There is nothing left to say.”

 

“Plenty left to say.”

 

Another lightening burst, another rolling growl of thunder. Reid pinches the bridge of his nose. “Then speak, man. Deliver this message my mind is so insistent that I hear.”

 

“All right: I needed you.”

 

The American accent floats disembodied, coming from every angle to swirl about his head. Reid opens his eyes; Jackson is on his feet again, both the hat and the bottle now absent. There is nothing to distract from the accusation in his gaze.

 

“I needed you, and you walked away.”

 

“I did what I could. How was I to save you from yourself?”

 

This clearly holds no weight with the captain. “Truth is, you abandoned me the minute I was of no use to you. Once I could no longer live up to your standards. Hell, you abandoned us all.”

 

“No.” The glass in the window panes rattles under the weather’s continued onslaught.

 

“Even your daughter. Your little girl, Reid.”

 

“I did _not_ abandon my daughter.” An automatic protest. Even as he says it, he wonders if this too might not somehow be true. “She was taken –“

 

"You've pushed her memory away, tried to forget her. You may as well have.”

 

He has not forgotten her. It is only that this loss is now buried under the press of so many years, so many others. “You will not speak of her.”

 

Less of a threat than that moment in the deadroom, when fury had him pinning the American with a crushing arm against the wall. Back at the start. When they were still fumbling for their respective boundaries. He means it as much now as he did then, but this time it does not reverberate with the strength that it did.

 

“Or what?” Jackson asks, not in the least bit cowed. “How is it you think you can still hurt me?”

 

“I never chose to hurt you.” It’s a murmur, barely sound. Lost under the noise of the storm. Suddenly unwilling to look at the other man, Reid jerks his chair around to face the other way. The legs screech complaint over the stones.

 

Jackson leans against the wall by the window, standing in front of Reid in this direction as well. He supposes that this is something he should have expected.

 

“Fine. You’d rather converse about the rest?” There is none of the warmth Reid remembers visible in Jackson’s expression, though perhaps this is a falsely rendered recollection. Difficult to be sure after all these years, after all that’s happened. Is it possible that the entirety of their friendship had been merely an invented thing?

 

“How ‘bout your women, Reid? Where are they now?”

 

The question instantly dredges up their faces, unbidden and unstoppable. Deborah’s quiet fortitude. The impish intelligence dancing behind Jane’s eyes. Emily…

 

Emily.

 

While he feels sure that he will see none of them again, this last is a certainty. Reid suffers no delusions of a reunion in some kind of idyllic afterlife.

 

“What was it?” Jackson asks, around the new cigarette that droops from his lips. “Enjoyed yourself the pleasures of the forbidden, until your precious morality caught up?”

 

“No.” It cannot be as simple as that.

 

“C’mon, you can tell me. I’ve been there.” The lit stick dangles lazily from the corner of his mouth as the leer shifts into more of a shrugging grin. “’Cept for maybe the morality bit.”

 

The comfortable closeness that the storm brought to the room has since morphed into a sensation more stifling. The world smears itself across his line of sight, and Reid reaches up to loosen the knot in his tie. He knows he is sitting in his chair, at his desk. But he can’t shake the feeling that he is falling.

 

Jackson’s hands on his wrists now, holding him fast to the armrests. The captain’s features inexplicably centimeters from his own. Reid jerks his head backward, but there is nowhere for him to go.

 

“Or we could talk about Drake. Wanna talk about Drake?”

 

The tone is bland, clashing with the intensity in those blue eyes. He does not know this man. He never knew this man. Reid squirms, but he cannot escape the phantom’s grip.

 

“Suppose we could chalk that one up more an escape. Finally got tired of you kicking him, did he? Took himself off to find a new master?”

 

“Stop…” The plea works no better than the last time he uttered it. The confining circles of Jackson’s fingers burn impossibly into Reid’s wrists; he can feel the skin searing beneath his sleeves.

 

“Everyone,” Jackson whispers, and though the face remains before him, Reid would swear those lips brush against his ear. “Everyone you get close to.”

 

A banished memory of that mouth rough against his skin. In the end they’d never been forced to discuss it, as rapidly as everything else had deteriorated.

 

“Release me.”

 

Futility sets the demand wavering. But pride and discomfort had insisted he try.

 

“You’re gonna die alone down here, Reid.”

 

“Perhaps.” It is all that he finds he can say.

 

The universe flips upside down. A crash of thunder somehow echoing before the lightening that blanks the room.

 

“Edmund?”

 

Reid blinks, his eyes reluctant to cooperate in the unexpected brightness. The overhead bulbs cast new shadows, defining the room in different terms.

 

“Edmund, are you down here?”

 

Footsteps. Reid’s neck twinges as he twists to look over his shoulder; the headache has not vanished as swiftly as the apparition. Fred Abberline’s mustache appears first around the vertical edge of the shelves, accentuating rather than disguising the frown that follows it.

 

“Another night spent with your books? This becomes habit.”

 

Reid scrambles to his feet, awkward in the lingering sense of unbalance, and a sick uneasiness narrows his throat. Is he to assume this man is any more real than his last guest? The overhead lights stab at the inside of his skull. He swallows, working to compose his expression as Abberline eyes him warily.

 

He cannot keep from checking the corners for any sign of the American.

 

There is of course none, and Fred is tracking each one of his darting glances. Reid clears his throat. Attempts to stand up straighter. He is awake; Abberline is here. He must be.

 

“Go home,” Abberline tells him. “Take the day.” It’s a voice to be used on a spooked horse. Reid thinks he spies pity in the other man’s eyes.

 

Any other time, this would bother him. But he can muster nothing capable of breaking through the smothering blanket of confused exhaustion wrapped heavily around his shoulders. Reid wonders if Jackson’s ghost waits for him back at that empty house.

 

The thought is enough to spark the start of a feeble objection. “No, I –“

 

Abberline rolls over the top of it. “That was not a request, Edmund.”

 

A look at Fred’s face assures him that the man has made his mind up in this. Reid nods a false acquiescence. His superior never remains long at the shop these days; he will wait until Abberline has left, and put in a few more hours at least.

 

But the Chief Inspector knows him too well. “Now,” he growls. “Or so help me I shall drag you out of here myself.”

 

There is no choice; Reid doubts Abberline will actually make good on this threat, but he is not a man to be tested. And though his presence is no longer a constant here, he is still the ranking officer. Perhaps, Reid thinks, as he obligingly precedes Fred out of the archive, he will return to Leman Street some time later in the afternoon.

 

The corridors are nearly vacant. His watch reads just after seven.

 

Fred follows at his back, as if he fears Reid may be contemplating escape. Artherton stands sentry at his post; Abberline allows Reid to exchange words with his desk sergeant, but he waits only a short distance away. When they have finished speaking, Fred trails him all the way to the door.

 

Outside, it has stopped raining. If ever it had been at all.

 

 

 

 

**end.**


End file.
